Slow Bleed: Memories Trapped In Time
by vinh
Summary: Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd. Memories.


**_Slow Bleed : Memories Trapped In Time_**

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_Rating: _PG-13

_Prompts:_ Ocean and Regret

_Summary_: Addison. Memories.

_Author's Note: _This was written for a fic challenge. Loads of thank yous to my lovely betas.

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After watching the hours go by on the clock she gets up to a dark and gloomy day. She barely winces at the sight of the dark smudges under her eyes as she realizes that there is no point in covering them. This time is for her. She grabs her sandals and decides to forgo the umbrella because the rain might actually allow her tears to be freed.

Now, as the day comes to an end and still no hint of the rain that has been threatening to come down all day. She finds that the dreariness very much suites her mood. It doesn't seem to matter how many miles she flies, her problems cannot be left behind instead they cling fiendishly to her skirt attempting to ensnare her once again.

She looks up and sees the light diminish as dark clouds slowly ease across the graying sky.

For some odd reason it reminds her of them. Of whispered promises and vows set adrift on the winds of innocence, naivety and untried love. She winces at their ignorance in the face of everyone and anything that attempted to pursue them differently. She smiles, her eyes close as she faintly recalls the roar of the waves that were privy to their heated vows and the careless abandonment of young love celebrated. She swears she can feel his lips making a pilgrimage down her body before he pulls away to laugh at the wind's affectionate tousling. The sunset witnesses their fervent whispers of love and devotion as passions ignite.

She claims that time has dulled her memory but that day will foreverbe a tattooed remembrance in her mind's eye. If she closes her eyes she can smell the ocean air. She pretends to have forgotten because it hurts her knowing that her love has forgotten that day. That he replaces her with someone else, a younger someone who looks at him as if he's hung the sun for her.

Her throat burns as she tries to keep her anguish hidden until she can escape the judging glares and the falsely sympathetic looks and words.

She tries to leave it all behind; instead it felt like she was caught up in a conflagration that is destroying her slowly from the inside out. She is sure that the people she passes on the way to the ocean were blinded by the incandescence that marked the start of her emotional rebirth. She walks through the fire, before rising from the ashes of her mistakes and regrets in a frenzy of crimson and purpose renewed.

She regrets that she wasn't strong enough to handle her pain on her own. That in a moment of weakness she reached for her beloved and found to her horror that he wasn't there. It was then she made her biggest mistake, she blindly reached for the second best thing, anything to stave of the agony burning inside her.

She regrets allowing her love to drift away from her. She knows that their love would have moved past this if he had really wanted to. She blinks back tears at the though that she wasn't enough for him to fight for her or their marriage. Perhaps their marriage was always cracked deep beneath the surface. She fears that their love was doomed from the moment their naïve promises and vows were uttered on that beach. That fate had smiled down on them and their youthful exuberance and had dared her see if they had truly meant their words.

In away her loves' broken promises and vows have released the agony and darkness inside her that only his mere presence had been able to keep away. She feels so desecrated and shattered. His callousness cuts through the fragile mess that is her heart as if it was soft butter.

Without him she is frail. She decides that she will survive this. It will take her time how to learn to breathe and think again when her agony leeches so much off her. Her love comes to her and says that he worries about her. It pains her to send him away because his presence drove back the roar of the darkness inside but he can't have it both ways. There is no middle ground for them. They have always been all or nothing. Her smile is faint but she finds it easier to breathe knowing that there's still a part of him that remembers her. It lessens her regrets and diminishes the darkness inside by just a bit. Perhaps they can still find paradise together and repair their broken promises or perhaps she'll find someone who can obliterate all the darkness and agony inside.

She will survive this.


End file.
